Hieronymus Bosch

to us today—the canvases full of torture, monsters, and leering

devils—was perfectly intelligible to the fifteenth-century viewer. The

subjects of Bosch's paintings were in fact the overwhelming concerns of

late medieval Europe: the Last Judgment, original sin, death,

temptations of the flesh. The author describes each picture in detail,

placing each work within the context of medieval folklore and religion,

and explains that many of the acts portrayed in the pictures were

visual translations of verbal puns or metaphors.